Buck Harvey: Lesson of Dice: Not about luck

With 43 seconds to go, with the game long ago decided, Antonio McDyess acted like someone who wanted to meet Dirk Nowitzki’s orthopedist. McDyess stumbled a half-dozen rows into the stands in pursuit of a loose ball.

“That was scary,” McDyess said later, and he smiled.

McDyess knows what can go wrong even when everything appears to be perfect in January. But he also knows this doesn’t always have to do with health or with luck.

His Pistons, of five years ago, taught him that.

The previous NBA team to start a season faster than these Spurs is Detroit in 2005-06. They had lost to the Spurs in the previous Finals, and they played the next season as if every game was a Game 7. They routed the Spurs twice in rematches in that early stretch.

In January the Pistons were the only team to use the same starters every night, just as the Spurs are now. They won with balance, as the Spurs have this season, and that was reflected in something the Spurs will also soon face: Not one Piston was voted as an All-Star starter.

Still, four Pistons were named to the All-Star Game as backups. And when asked how many Spurs should be this time, McDyess didn’t hesitate.

“Three,” he said, and everyone knows which three.

But that’s where the similarities end. The Pistons began that season 37-6, and they had the swagger of a team that had come within a game in San Antonio of back-to-back championships.

These Spurs get no such reviews. They keep running into limping franchises such as Dallas on Friday night, and it’s been the theme of the season. Going by this, Carmelo Anthony will be traded before Sunday night.

Their record is both undeniable and remarkable. Win Sunday, and they are at the halfway point of the season and halfway to 70 wins. But doesn’t everyone still think the Lakers are the favorites in the West?

There was no such doubt with McDyess’ Pistons. They impressed everyone, including themselves.

“I gotta rate us up there,” Chauncey Billups said then, “in the top five all-time.”

Their new coach, Flip Saunders, had pepped up their offense, just as Gregg Popovich did for the Spurs this season. And while the players marveled at the freedom Larry Brown never provided, they quickly questioned Saunders when cracks showed.

McDyess thinks Saunders leaned on his top seven players too much, exhausting them during the fast start, and Saunders’ credibility wore out along the way. Little things ate at the team as their dominating start faded, and McDyess remembers the team “lost focus.”

He looked especially broken after Detroit lost Game 5 of the Cleveland series then. He sat on the bench for 10 minutes before leaving the arena without changing.

Now the record is similar, and nothing else. Do any of the Spurs think they are top five all-time of anything?

“It’s funny you say that,” McDyess said. “Because I don’t think we see ourselves that way. We don’t take anything for granted.”

He credits Popovich, who clearly has the credibility that Saunders lacked. “He keeps us grounded,” McDyess said. “He won’t let us get the big head.”

Popovich was at it Friday. Even in the quick ESPN sideline interview between quarters, he managed to work in his message of the day. “We caught a break,” he said of meeting the injured Mavericks.

The Spurs can still fade, just as the Pistons did. But it won’t be because they think, because of their January record, they are better than anyone. They will grind in Minnesota and Milwaukee and they will grind against the injured Mavericks.

And maybe nothing outlined that better than at the end Friday, when McDyess kept lunging, all the way into the spring.